Mumday's Purely Posies translated

 

 Magenta paintbrush, Castilleja parviflora, from Paradise, Mount Rainier National Park.

It's VERY hard to capture this color on camera. It really glows and vibrates at you.  The distinctive pink/purple cast is very different from the orange and reds of paintbrush I see around here. It looks amazing amid all that green!

Anemone, or pasqueflower (per my Wildflowers of Mount Rainier book), Anemone occidentalis.

These look like GIANT strawberry flowers to me. My favorite thing about this flower, described as "an early bloomer of subalpine meadows," is the seed phase of this flower, where it looks like a Dr. Seuss character.

 How cute and woolly are they?

This beauty is called Cusick's veronica, Veronica cusickii.

It is described by the Wildflowers of Mount Rainier book as: "of all the blues, blue-purples, and violets at Rainier, the color of Cusick's veronica may suproass them all for richness and sensuality." Oh, my! Ya think the author, Laird R. Blackwell, is a fan, maybe? I LOVE how the anthers and pistil fling themselves out from the plane of the petals. SO dramatic!

Beargrass, Xerophyllum tenax.

Neither an inherently interesting, nor a species-typical photograph, it is, however, a plant I appreciate and is important at Mount Rainier, as is used by Native Americans for various things (leaves in basket weaving??), so I wanted to include it. Frequently, the stem presents the flowering head via an elegant,  sweeping curve, but I saw the best ones when passing by in a car... =)

According to my book the stems can be up to FIVE FEET TALL, so you can bet on a background of deep green, these things can be seen from forever away. I'd seldom been out and about taking pictures when they were blooming, so it was a treat to see them dabbing the hillsides.

 Best guess is Lewis monkeyflower, Mimulus lewisii.

I have always loved monkeyflower. This is the first flower I learned about as a kid that was described as having a face. And how can that name NOT capture the imagination of kid?

The (IMHO) hypnotically beautiful avalanche lily, Erythronium montanum.

I just want to STARE at them.

All day.

biobabbler